Wing Ma’am: Find Love in a Hopeful Place

By Shaley Howard, PQ Monthly

Are you looking for love in all the wrong places? Have you been trying to find the LGBT women’s scene but continually only end up frustrated and all alone on a Saturday night—watching L-Word reruns and eating pints of Salt N Straw? Or perhaps you’re thinking the only way to meet other LGBT women is to join a softball team? Well put that mitt down, stop trying on those ridiculously tight polyester umpire shorts, and get ready—there’s a new app in town called Wing Ma’am (www.wingmaam.com)—a new, free location-based social networking app specifically made for LGBT ladies.

The creator of Wing Ma’am, Ariella Furman, said she was frustrated with the challenges of finding the LGBT Women’s community. She saw her gay male friends could use apps like Grindr—the world’s largest all-male location-based social network—and easily find guys who were also gay within a hundred feet. She was completely amazed by Grindr. When she learned there was no female alternative, she was a little offended and dumbfounded. Why did her gay male friends have access to seemingly everything—bars, hookups, the apps, etc., yet it continues to be incredibly difficult for LGBT women to connect?

So she decided to create an alternative app similar to Grindr but designed specifically for LGBT women.

“I decided to keep some features of Grindr, but also make it different since women and men like to connect differently. The initial concept of Wing Ma’am was to keep it more like a community app (with events, options to find friends, double dating, etc.) rather than mainly focusing on the hook-up aspects like Grindr does.”

Since Wing Ma’am’s launch about two months ago, it already has over 12,000 users on iOS—plus Android will be launching the app shortly. It’s also the only app out there that focuses on community rather than just dating, in hopes it can benefit both single people as well as people in relationships.

One delighted user, Lacie Cocia, exclaimed, “It’s so hard to meet women and this app makes it so easy.”

With app features ranging from highlighting local LGBT events, club scenes, happy hours, monthly queers parties and festivals to covering personal dating, double dating, friendship and hookups—this app connects women with other women in the community—while keeping them informed. And it works everywhere. Simply changing the zip code on the app allows users to check out women from all over the world. That’s so very Scruff of it.

Furman had more to say about Wing Ma’am: “Right now many LGBT women often feel isolated, have trouble meeting other like-minded women and find that information about events can be fragmented. The goal of the Wing Ma’am is to connect, empower and unify the LGBT women’s community.”

If you are a single lady looking to find the right partner, you’re in luck—this app places a lot more emphasis on deeper questions like: Where do you see yourself in 10 years? What are your fears? What are you good and bad at doing? Since we all know how many women out there absolutely love to go into great detail and process deeper, more meaningful things—this might be the app for all of them.

Although the dating portion of this app does focus more on substantial, meaningful relationship questions—I just have to declare: There’s nothing wrong with the casual hookups, am I right?! (All the Grindr boys are yelling, “Hell yes!”) And the people at Wing Ma’am also seem to agree because in addition to the categories of “dating,” “double dating,” and “friendship”—there’s also a “let’s hookup” category for those women out there that just wanna play. Love this!

If all of these dating options are not enough for you, Wing Ma’am also has an entire calendar of events so you can know everything that’s going on locally—and even in other cities. You can even start your own event and post it on the app for all other LGBT women to see and attend.

“Seriously, I do not think I have to tell you how groundbreaking this is for LGBT women,” said Jenna Hogue, Wing Ma’am user.

Wing Ma’am clearly has the LGBT women represented and covered—it seems they’ve thought of virtually everything and everyone. Whether you’re searching for upcoming events, looking to date, hookup or find some new friends, this app will pretty much do everything except locate the nearest U-Haul facility when you meet your princess charming.

And one more thing, Wing Ma’am is starting a volunteer program for anyone wanting to donate their time in helping spread the word about this new resource for LGBT women.

“Volunteers get to hand out flyers and post online which is a great way to meet new people and have a little fun on the side. Plus they get to add ‘Wing Ma’am Ambassador’ to their resume,” Furman said.

So what are you waiting for? You’ve been looking to connect, hookup or possibly volunteer for a while so isn’t it time to check out Wing Ma’am? For all information about dating, events and volunteering go to www.wingmaam.com.